Financial crises affect income distribution by way of different channels. The authors argue that financial transfers are an important channel which has been overlooked by the literature. They study the role of financial transfers by analyzing some of the most severe Latin American crises during...

Inherent in pursuing openness to international capital flows is an awareness that it brings both benefits and risks. Much of the current debate is about how best to balance them. Major benefits for developing countries include access to a broader menu of investment sources, options, and...

The authors analyze how foreign entry affected domestic banks in Argentina during an especially intense period of entry in the mid-1990s. Their results are consistent with the hypothesis that foreign banks enter areas where they have a competitive advantage, putting pressure on the domestic...

Analyzing new data, the authors find that the general trend toward increased use of foreign-currency-denominated bank deposits in emerging markets has continued, despite declines in a few countries. Their analysis of the new data suggests that a sizable fraction (about half, on average) of funds...

The stimulation of private saving is essential to both stabilization and structural adjustment in the transition economies. Private saving in these countries has declined sharply since independence, and this decline has been a factor in the onset of extreme inflation because governments have...

The authors examine the short- and long-run effects of financial liberalization on capital markets. To do so, they construct a new comprehensive chronology of financial liberalization in 28 developed and emerging economies since 1973. The authors also construct an algorithm to identify booms and...

The authors investigate the origins of the East Asian crisis and its contagion, examine the channels of contagion, and discuss policy recommendationsThey make detailed recommendations in the context of nine general lessons learned from the East Asian crisis. 1) Preventing crises and contagion:...

The authors examine the effect of volatility on the costs and benefits of financial market integration. The authors use a basic framework that combines the costly state verification model and the contract enforceability approach. They assess the welfare effects of financial market integration by...

This paper argues that the dominant policy paradigm on financial development is increasingly insufficient to address big emerging issues that are particularly relevant for financial systems in Latin America. This paradigm was shaped over the past decades by a fundamental shift in thinking toward...

What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of bank-based financial systems (as in Germany and Japan) and market-based financial systems (as in England and the United States). Does financial structure matter? In bank-based systems banks play a leading role in mobilizing savings,...